As we all know, Miley Cyrus is currently wearing a whole lot of nothing on her buzzy “Bangerz” tour. That includes shrunken feathered boleros, sequined bras and Chanel bags the size of your grandma’s cigarette case. Though her pot-leaf leotard certainly deserves its own discourse, let’s take a minute to focus on cheeky chaps — the most storied piece of clothing in Miley’s closet of sexed-up couture.
Chaps get “Dirrty”
Cheeky chaps — or as grammar sticklers call them, chaps (all styles show off a bit of bottom cheek) — were originally protective garments for rugged-types. Horse riders have worn them for centuries; motorcyclists, decades. They have also been a key component in fetish fashion and leather subcultures for years, or at least since the Village People were topping the charts.
However, for our purposes, chaps didn’t exist until 2002, when Christina Aguilera wore them in her “Dirrty” video:
Described by director David LaChapelle as “a post-apocalyptic orgy,” the five-minute ode to blood, sweat and butt cheeks shocked viewers with fiery rawness. It also freed Aguilera from her teen pop typecast (as the album title “Stripped” suggests), and made chaps a powerful symbol of sexual subversion.
A Hollywood hit
Shortly after “Dirrty,” chaps made a big-screen appearance in “Sin City.” In the 2005 movie, Jessica Alba plays a stripper — and that’s about all anyone remembers about director Robert Rodriguez’s neo-noir thriller. With sensual moves and an insanely toned tummy, the actress secured for chaps a permanent place in pop culture.
Skip to 0:50 and see how:
Attaboy
A decade later, chaps switched teams. Matthew McConaughey bared his behind in 2012’s “Magic Mike” (again, strippers), and fashion designer Jeremy Scott referenced Westerns for his “Beverly Hillbillies”-inspired spring 2012 show that featured male models in updated versions of the cowboy classic.
What a girl wants, what a girl needs . . .
Is a pair of chaps, apparently.
Everything came full circle when Aguilera turned up to support Miley Cyrus at Saturday night’s “Bangerz” show in Los Angeles. The 33-year-old pop diva tweeted a photo of Cyrus, 21, wearing leather chaps that recall her own “Stripped”-era love affair with the skimpy style.
Coincidently, Aguilera was 21 when “Dirrty” debuted.